Welcome to Wisconsin. Home of recallmania.
As the unions strike back against the governor who forced them to ask permission to collect dues from public employees, controversy over the ongoing recall process is emerging. One liberal organization is saying people have a right to sign more than one recall petition. The state regulators admit it’s true, they have that right and although only one signature per eligible voter is supposed to be counted as vaild, their temporary workers won’t be accountable for finding duplicates.
Huh?
This MacIver News’ report provides the details.
The state board overseeing the potential recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker tells the MacIver News Service that they will rely upon temporary workers to scrutinize recall petitions and those individuals will not be expected to catch any duplicate signatures submitted by recall organizers.
This revelation comes as one statewide liberal group is actively promoting the collection of duplicate signatures, paving the way for a lengthy process wherein Walker supporters will challenge the validity of the recall petitions.
One Wisconsin Now, a liberal non-profit, posted on its website “you can circulate or sign a recall petition even if you have already signed another recall petition.”
This advice, however, will complicate the signature challenge process and runs counter to the advice of nonpartisan state election regulators.
“While it is not illegal to sign more than once, we do not suggest people sign a second time unless they have good reason to believe the first petition they signed was somehow fraudulent,” Reid Magney, GAB Spokesman.
One Wisconsin Now follows their advice with this disclaimer: “[N]ote, however, that only one signature per person will be counted,”
That is not necessarily true.
Magney told MNS said that the pro-union groups obtaining recall signatures will be expected to self-police the collection of duplicate signatures.
However, neither the state Democratic Party nor the pro-labor organizations steering the recall drive have disclosed any process by which they will identify and discard the duplicate signatures they obtain.
Recall organizers announced Monday that they have collected 300,000 of the 540,000 signatures necessary to trigger a recall election of Walker. Until those signatures are actually submitted to the GAB, however, there is no way to verify that claim or determine whether that figure includes duplicate signatures. Even then, it will be up to outside groups like the Walker campaign or the state Republican Party to sort through the signatures to find any invalid and/or duplicate signatures.
Until the signatures are submitted and independently checked, there is no way to know how many people are heeding One Wisconsin Now’s advice.